BBMG is turning 20 this month (whoop! whoop!) and it has us reflecting on the glorious, inspiring and humbling journey we’ve traveled to design brands that have a meaningful impact in the world.

As we enter young adulthood, we’re appreciating how growing up is full of hopes and dreams, awkward steps and, most importantly, soul-to-soul connections, exciting epiphanies and lasting relationships that shape who we are individually – and who we can be together.

What started as two dear friends working out of the Donut House on Court Street in Brooklyn has grown into a consultancy helping some of the world’s biggest brands and most influential organizations redesign the systems and reimagine the stories that can regenerate our world. All while supporting our remarkable colleagues through the years in making a life, not just a living.

Founding Inspiration and Beliefs

Mitch Baranowski and I met at the University of Texas at Austin where we were both teaching assistants for professor John Rodden and his course on utopian literature. We explored concepts of the good life and the good society from pre-Socratic philosophy to Harlequin romance novels to science fiction movies. He inspired our enduring belief in the power of our values, ideals and stories to shape society and build a better future.

When we were starting BBMG, we asked my dad, Rabbi Jack Bemporad, what he would do if he were to start a business (since it’s always good to ask a rabbi and a theologian for insights on business, right?). And it turns out he had some AWESOME advice that continues to guide our aspirations today.

Five Principles for BBMG:

1. Whatever nourishes your deepest creativity comes to life every day
2. Work with people who share your values
3. Learn and grow every day, both as a human and as a professional
4. Use our precious time on Earth to make life better for others and for our planet
5. Make a decent living and provide a living for others

Twenty years later, these five principles remain at the heart.

Learning As We Grow

Throughout this milestone year, we’ll be celebrating our team, our client partners, and our collaborators, friends and allies who have graciously shared this ride.

And for today, I’ll start with reflections and gratitude for the personal lessons that are emerging along the way.

First, I’m increasingly mindful of how naive I was in the early days of BBMG to think that we could just focus on one side of a system or an issue and make progress. The events of the past twenty years — and especially the past few years — have deepened my understanding of how everything is interconnected and interdependent and how meaningful change requires a new relationship with power, place and leadership. And while these realities are second nature to Indigenous communities, ecologists and movement leaders, this wisdom is only just now starting to shine through in business.

The second humbling appreciation is just in my own lived experience as a white cisgender man. I grew up in a nearly all-white suburban neighborhood in North Dallas, where I benefited from spectacular parents, loving friends, inspiring mentors and abundant resources, but where ignorance, racism and cruelty were always present as well.

In my life and in our work, I am recognizing how the greatest challenges facing humanity lie at the intersection of climate change and racial justice – and that our shared purpose must be preserving life on a healthy planet and dismantling racism and the systems and structures of supremacy, separation and othering to transform ourselves and our world.

These have been profound areas of realization and growth for me, and the learning continues. I think business is slowly coming to similar moments of recognition, and hopefully, reimagination and repair.

At the end of the day, I am so grateful for every step along this journey – and the opportunity to do work I love with people I love for the things that matter. And I can’t wait to see what continues to evolve and manifest from our kind, brilliant and mighty team.

So, here’s to 20 years of human connection, growth and impact — and many more yet to come!

Rock on,
Raphael